Oral Presentation on the USDA Food Guidance System/ …

       Oral Presentation on the USDA Food Guidance System/
                        Food Guide Pyramid
                                       Public Hearing

                                      Bill Sanda
                                Director, Public Affairs
                              Weston A. Price Foundation

                                       August 19, 2004

I want to take this opportunity to thank the USDA and its Center for Nutrition Policy and
Promotion for conducting this very important public hearing on the Food Pyramid. I am
Bill Sanda, Director of Public Affairs for Weston A. Price Foundation.

The Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) food and nutrition education organization
founded in 1999 dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to our diet through
education, research and activism. We support a number of movements that contribute
to this objective including accurate nutrition education, organic and biodynamic farming,
pasture feeding of livestock, community-supported farms, honest and informative
labeling, prepared parenting and nurturing therapies. The board, membership and 225
local chapters of the Weston A. Price Foundation stand united in the belief that modern
technology should be harnessed as a servant to the wise and nurturing traditions of our
ancestors and that science and knowledge can validate those traditions. The
Foundation's quarterly journal, Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and the Healing Arts,
is dedicated to exploring the scientific validation of dietary, agricultural and medical
traditions throughout the world. The Foundation invites you to visit its informative and
educational website at www.westonaprice.org.

Before I comment on the food pyramid design and present our recommendations, I want
to make two points about nutrition and food:

A 1971 USDA study on nutrition titled, "An Evaluation of Research in the Untied States
on Human Nutrition" 1 reported:

·   Major health issues are diet related;

·   The solution to illness can be found in nutrition

·   The real potential from improved diet is preventative in that it may defer or modify
    the development of a disease state

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·   Better health, a longer lifespan and greater satisfaction from work, family and leisure
    time are some of the benefits from improved nutrition

Interestingly, this study was never released to the public by the Nixon Administration,
yet the findings are most critical to our welfare.

In addition, many now believe that we have more altered our food supply in the past 50
years than we have in the last 10,000 years when humans started to shift from
hunters/gathers to farming.

Given these findings as well as many others, nutrition, food and our diets obviously play
a most significant role in our health and well-being.

In our opinion, an effective approach to healthy nutrition is to go back to the four
basic food groups and the eating practices recommended 60-70 years ago in
books on nutrition and dietetics written before the introduction of imitation foods
in the 1950s.

The Weston A. Price Foundation makes the following recommendations:

First and foremost, abandon the current Food Pyramid concept and return
the proposed Food Guidance/Dietary Guidelines to a plan that stresses
high quality foods from four basic groups.

Everyday, eat high quality, unprocessed foods from each of the following four
groups:

    1.   Animal foods: meat, poultry, fish, eggs and whole milk products
    2.   Grains and legumes: whole grain baked goods, breakfast porridges, beans
    3.   Fruits and Vegetables: preferably fresh or frozen
    4.   Fats and Oils: unprocessed saturated and monounsaturated fats including
         butter and other animal fats, palm oil and coconut oil, olive oil and peanut
         oil - an average of 35-40 percent of energy from food intake should come
         from beneficial fats and oils.

Eat sparingly: sweets, white flour products, soft drinks and fried foods. Urge
avoidance of processed foods containing refined and partially hydrogenated
vegetable oils, highly sugared foods, especially those foods containing high
fructose corn syrup as well as refined, highly processed protein isolates. Limit
added sugars to no more than 10 percent of daily caloric intake.

I am aware of the fact that this statement contradicts the information given to both the
health profession and the public since the development of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines in
the 1970s. Our experience is that the current Food Pyramid does not give anyone

                                   Weston A. Price Foundation
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trying to use it any clear indication of the amounts of natural food products that would be
appropriate versus the processed food products that would be selected. Our preference
is that all of the food products used for forming meals and snacks should be natural and
not the highly processed products that are so readily available in the supermarket. That
would mean that there should be a minimal amount of products being promoted that are
made or prepared with trans fatty acid-containing partially hydrogenated vegetable fats
or with excessive amounts of the refined polyunsaturated oils with high amounts of
omega 6 essential fatty acids. Natural, more saturated fat and oils such as butter,
tallow, lard, coconut, palm and palm kernel oils should be encouraged rather than
discouraged because of their health promoting components. These include the
saturated fatty acids such as palmitic acid and lauric acid, both of which are needed in
the diet - palmitic acid keeps lungs healthy and lauric acid helps the body fight many
pathogenic bacteria and viruses.

Butter should be used instead of margarine. Milk and cheese products should preferably
be full-fat. Nut and bean milks should be used judiciously knowing that they are not an
appropriate replacement for cow or goat milk, and imitation cheese should be avoided.
Eggs should be farm raised as opposed to factory raised.

Only during the last century has man's diet included a high percentage of refined
carbohydrates. Our ancestors ate fruits and grains in their whole, unrefined state. In
nature, sugars and carbohydrates--the energy providers--are linked together with
vitamins, minerals, enzymes, protein, fat and fiber--the bodybuilding and digestion-
regulating components of the diet. In whole form, carbohydrates support life, but refined
carbohydrates are inimical to life because they are devoid of bodybuilding elements.

Grain products should be made with natural fats, not partially hydrogenated vegetable
fats and oils. Amounts of grain products should be individualized with the realization that
many individuals are carbohydrate sensitive. Grain products made with sugar or high
fructose corn syrup and normally served as desserts should be recognized as foods for
occasional consumption that may have excessive calories for some individuals. Fruits
and vegetables should be encouraged to be grown organically.

Part of the reason for the existence of the Food Pyramid and Dietary Guidelines is the
mistaken belief that these guidelines will decrease the development of heart disease in
adults. The concept has been extended to children, and the idea of feeding children
lower fat diets in an effort to ward off the development of heart disease in later life has
gained acceptance among some pediatric research groups. In our opinion, this
approach to feeding children is not healthy.

Pediatric clinicians noted a number of years ago that children who were put onto low-fat
and low-cholesterol diets failed to grow properly.2 And when researchers prominently
associated with the American Heart Association fed children lower fat diets and
measured some of the markers they consider important predictors of heart disease,
they learned that these lower fat diets were causing the very problems they wanted to
prevent. The children whose genes would normally have been producing the desirable
                                 Weston A. Price Foundation
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form of LDL (light fluffy LDL) started to make the dangerous form of LDL (the small
dense LDL).3

Beneficial fats and oils are found in meat and fish and fat in vegetables, nuts, and
grains, or they can be added to foods through cooking and as dressings and sauces. A
spoonful of beneficial fat or oil can be easily added to soup or stew or mixed dishes or
hot cereals.

Beneficial fats are dairy fats such as butter, cream, and whole milk. Beneficial fats are
natural fats from properly fed animals, poultry, and fish. These animal fats supply
vitamin A, vitamin D, and the proper cholesterol needed for brain and vision
development. Animal vitamin A is critical for growing children as they do not adequately
convert the vitamin A precursor -- beta-carotene -- found in plants. The animal fats also
supply other fat-soluble nutrients that support the immune system such as
glycosphingolipids. Fish oils such as cod liver oil also supply important elongated
omega-3 fatty acids as well as vitamins A and D.

Beneficial oils are those readily extracted from fruits such as olive oil, palm oil, coconut
oil, and they are traditionally unrefined. Beneficial oils are also those that are unrefined
and extracted from many nuts and seeds. Some of these oils are called omega-3 oils,
omega-6 oils, and omega-9 oils. Oils with plenty of omega-3 include flaxseed oil and
perilla oil; those with moderate amounts of omega-3 fatty acids include unrefined canola
oil, soybean oil, and walnut oil. Many oils such as unrefined corn oil, safflower oil, and
sunflower oil do not have much omega-3 but are typically high in omega-6 fatty acids,
and they should be used in small amounts.

Foods for children should be chosen so that they supply a mixture of these different fats
and oils. No one fat or oil can properly suit all purposes, although many of the good
quality animal fats come close. They also need an amount of elongated omega-3 fats
that come primarily from fatty fish and fish oils. Children need adequate amounts of the
stable saturated fats; they need enough of the monounsaturated fats or oils; and they
need an adequate amount and a proper balance of the essential fatty acids, which
come primarily from the omega-3 and omega-6 oils. Importantly, these oils should not
be partially hydrogenated or refined.

The members of the Weston A. Price Foundation thank you for the opportunity to speak
today. We will be forwarding you an extensive set of written comments on the food
pyramid based on our recommendations presented here.

References:
1
  Weir, C. Edith, "An Evaluation of Research in the United States on Human Nutrition, Report No. 2,
Benefits from Nutrition Research," Human Nutrition Research Division, Agricultural Research Service,
U. S. Department of Agriculture, August 1971.
2
  Smith, MM, and F. Lifshitz, Pediatrics, Mar 1994, 93:3:438-443.
3
  Dreon, MD et al, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2000;71:1611-1616.

                                    Weston A. Price Foundation
             PMB 106-380, 4200 WISCONSIN AVENUE, NW WASHINGTON, DC 20016 (202) 333-HEAL
               WEBSITE: www.WestonAPrice.org      EMAIL: WestonAPrice_contact@msn.com